Feldman: Bin Laden Fulfilled His One True Ambition

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-06/osama-bin-laden-fulfilled-his-one-true-ambition-noah-feldman.html

Here is a bet about the decade since Sept. 11: Historians are going to be mystified by it.

First, the U.S. won the Cold War -- or at least it appeared to. Then, like the U.K. initiating the Industrial Revolution at the height of its global dominance, the U.S. jump-started the Information Revolution. A decade after the Berlin Wall came down, the U.S. seemed poised for another century of global domination through a combination of hard and soft power. We could even afford an extended legal fight over who the next president was going to be.

Now, another 10 years on, the U.S. remains the most significant superpower -- but its position looks increasingly shaky. Its hard power took a hit through the realization that it couldn’t, in fact, take over cantankerous countries and turn them into thriving democracies, no matter how much money was spent or how many noble American lives were sacrificed. China is rising, and U.S. willingness to defend Taiwan by force of arms - - once the centerpiece of the U.S. Pacific policy -- is increasingly in doubt.

As for American soft power, forget about it (or if you prefer, fuggedaboudit). Always a subtle idea that depended upon the theory that culture follows the sword, the very notion now looks like a relic of a more confident age. Those today who preach the benefits of soft power sound very much unlike its originator: Joseph Nye. For the Harvard University professor of government and former senior Defense Department official, the theory was an adjunct to power from the barrel of a gun. Today, its expositors sound more like they think soft power is a substitute for the real thing.

[Fuddnik]

1. Missed in the translation: We had no intention of supporting "thriving democracy".

Inverted Totalitarianism or Managed Democracy at best, Central American style death squads if necessary. As long as we get their oil and other natural resources. Anything else is bullshit.

Funny thing. People don't like being occupied by foreign invaders. No matter the pretenses of Democrazy we erect. We might buy that benevolent bullshit. They don't.

[xchrom]

2. +1

[The Wizard]

3. As with all past empires

an outsized military footprint is the source of America's demise. When your biggest export is war.......

[BeyondGeography]

4. It was his one attainable ambition and he did achieve it

in the service of his other unattainable goal; global jihad.

He probably knew deep down he was pissing in the wind on that one, sitting there watching "Hos without Hijabs" on the DVD player in the compound. But he did clear the path for many bad things that neocons were dying to make happen in this country, no question.